I don't usually do this, but I had my dog in my studio last month and I caught this image of him:



I love my dog, and have a good number of pictures of him throughout my portfolio, but this capture has almost made Simon famous.  It is one of the images in my SS folio that gets downloaded just about everyday. 

Don't you just love it when you find that one image that gets the attention that you feel your whole portfolio deserves???

I keep hearing everyone talking about this idea of making room for text.  It is my opinion that any designer worth his salt can easily do just what you did and make his room for text.  I am sure that on SS, where images are one flat rate, it may not be a big deal, but on DT, no designer wants to pay for a larger image because I added more pixels that are just black (or white or whatever the background color is). 

I have a tendency to laugh a little bit when I see an image that takes up a quarter of the frame and the rest is all white.  I always think: Why not crop it down and give the designer his money's worth?  Of course this only applies to MS sites that charge different prices for different sized images like DT, etc.

Quote from: dbvirago on January 26, 2008, 20:09

Great looking dog, Jay, and nice shot. In the intersest of capitalizing on a good thing, why not extend the frame to the left and fill it with your black background?

Something like this, or maybe a bit more

Those two blacks are completely different. Is that deliberate in some weird way? What would be the point? The black on the left is clearly considerably darker than the background.

Non. Je ne comprends pas. You might as well add a pink strip to the left.

I agree.

Quote from: photojay on January 26, 2008, 20:26

I keep hearing everyone talking about this idea of making room for text.  It is my opinion that any designer worth his salt can easily do just what you did and make his room for text. 

Let's not forget that there are non-designers who buy images on these sites and need "finished" images. As much as we'd like to believe that there are nothing but skilled PS buyers, that just isn't so... people buy all sorts of "photoshoped" images that are more than a great designer would need... just look at the top 50 on SS any day and see how many images are put together from other pieces and sell like hotcakes.

Good point.  I do tend to forget about the non-ps users.  I remember a time when PS was a foreign language to me!  lol